Mr. Blyth on the Genus Gvis. 195 



vegetable life only) a lower degree of life and organization 

 may arise, like the fabled Phoenix, from ashes, and thus the 

 simpler forms of vegetation may derive their origin from the 

 upper ; but it must be admitted there are objections to this 

 assumption, and those not of theory and speculation, but 

 of fact and experience. Many erumpent Fungi have not 

 their origin in dying vegetable matter, but in substances 

 which have long lost all vitality, and therefore can part with 

 none to the parasites which infest them ; — Sphaeria entypa, for 

 example, which grows within the substance of wrought wood, 

 such as posts and rails, the origin of which cannot be ex- 

 plained satisfactorily according to the latter theory of the 

 production of imperfect vegetables. The whole subject is as 

 interesting as obscure ; and it is possible that an observer 

 who had time and leisure for tracing, with the assistance of 

 a microscope of sufficient power, the growth of some Fungus 

 of the lowest organization, such as Tubercularia, might arrive 

 at the ultimate point of its origin, and be enabled to decide 

 whether it had its being from a metamorphosis of the or- 

 ganized structure of the parent plant, or sprung from a spore, 

 and derived its nutriment only from the material in which 

 the germ of the parasite was previously deposited. 



Henry Oxley Stephens. 



Terrell Street, Bristol, March 12, 1841. 



XXVI. — An Amended List of the Species of the Genus Ovis. 

 By Edward Blyth, Esq.* 



The arrival of various spoils of different species of wild sheep, 

 since my memoir upon this genus of animals was read before the 

 Society, enables me now to clear up several points wliich I formerly 

 left as doubtful, as well as to include some additional species in the 

 catalogue, and to indicate still more as probably distinct, and there- 

 fore desiderata to which the attention of travellers and others should 

 be directed. 



1. Ovis Polii, nobis (the Pamir Sheep). In the narrative of 

 the celebrated Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, we read (in Mars- 

 den's edition, p. 142) that upon the elevated plain of Pamir, east- 

 ward of Bokhara, and which is 1 6,000 feet above the sea-level, " wild 

 animals are met with in great numbers, particularly sheep of a large 

 size, having horns three, four, and even six palms in length. The 

 shepherds form ladles and vessels of them for holding their victuals. 



* Read before the Zoological Society, July 28, 1810. The notes, bring- 

 ing the subject up to the present state of information, are now added by the 

 author for publication in this work. 



02 



